Thorny Path

“How...” Hendrick asked dazedly, staring at the golden glow in Martin’s blood, “How is your faith so strong... Do you not know that the Radiant Lord is...”

"Of course I do!” Martin grumbled, “I know better than you!”

“Then how? Do you serve the brat now?” the archbishop asked with killing intent.

However, Martin just stared at the old man, “Is it not possible to have pure faith?”

“Pure faith? Heh... How could such a thing exist in this era?”

“Faith has nothing to do with era, only determination.”

“Sigh... Perhaps.”

“Then what are you waiting for? Take your blade away, it hurts!”

Hendrick snorted in response, withdrawing the dagger before removing the chains locking Martin in place. The divine child ran a finger across his throat to heal the wound, rubbing the parts of his skin that the chains had grabbed before asking, “Did you find the contract?”

"I did, but... Take a look yourself,” Hendrick took a page out of the sacred texts and passed it over.

Martin took a look at the ancient leather page, only to find nothing written upon it. However, a few more seconds of staring revealed an inky darkness at the very centre, rapidly extending in all directions. The divine child was shocked for a moment, but when he shook his head and tried to study it again he couldn’t see anything.

“What did you see?” the archbishop asked with confusion.

"Darkness, with no sense of order."

“Sigh... So it seems like the ancient light has been contaminated. As I predicted, the source of our faith does not exist any longer.” Hendrick paused for a moment, smiling bitterly, “I couldn’t see a thing.”

"I could only see because of my unwavering faith,” Martin smiled warmly.

“But the Radiant Lord—”

“The Radiant Lord does not matter, he is not the target of my faith. Have you forgotten the first line of the sacred texts?”

“Light is the primordus, the beginning of all things...” Hendrick’s expression changed, “You worship light itself?”

“No, not exactly. What I worship is more advanced than light, but there is essentially no difference,” Martin smiled.

“But...” the archbishop felt his tongue dry out. The Radiant Lord had taken over the laws of light before igniting his godspark, becoming the embodiment of the laws themselves. This was true of all deities— worshipping them was effectively worshipping the laws they represented— but this level of abstraction was necessary for a worshipper to obtain power from their deity.

Priests gained their power directly through a sort of lease of divinity from the gods they worshipped, which was why they could grow powerful much more quickly than their peers. However, the separating layer from their deities made it near impossible for them to master the laws for themselves. This was one reason why true experts felt disdain for them; their upper limits were simply fixed by the deity they worshipped.

Martin implying he worshipped light itself meant that the Radiant Lord was out of the picture. It directly revealed an ambition to become a god himself. However, Hendrick simply couldn’t bring himself to believe such a thing, especially with the example of the current pope being right before them. There just wasn’t a good reason to walk down a similar road.

“Incorrect, you haven’t truly understood my meaning. I do not intend to replace the Radiant Lord, nor am I interested in denouncing the gods. I worship light, but that is not the extent of my faith. If the Radiant Lord was the incarnation of light, my faith would forever have been ardent. Now, my task is to find the next incarnation; only if there are none suitable will I take on the mantle myself.”

This explanation left Hendrick even more shocked. He sighed loudly, “Are you forcing me to make my choice? Is it not a little too early to show your cards?”

"It is indeed, but I have entered a situation that I cannot walk out of. Don’t you think we’ll miss many opportunities if we always wait for certainty?"

“Perhaps...” Hendrick smiled helplessly, “What are my choices now?”

“Abandon your original thoughts, and take me as your lord. But only after I return from heaven.”

“You’re going to heaven?”

Martin nodded, “Only there can I find pure light, the light I believe in. Those children continue to run amok as well, I need to restore order with my own hands.”

"You’ll die."

"That is why I asked you to wait until I return.”

A complicated expression crawled up Hendrick’s face, “Sigh. This is where I cannot equal you. With a long life on one side and a negligible chance to save my faith on the other... I never managed to take that final step. I cannot even compare to the Pope.”

“Faith is faith. We need only strive forwards in service of it, there is no time to appreciate the beauty of the world along the way.”

As Martin’s body started to glow ever so faintly, Hendrick went down onto one knee, “My Lord, please permit my pathetic faith. Allow me to give you some assistance on your journey.”

Martin smiled, placing a hand atop Hendrick’s head, “Following me will bring you good fortune.”

A short and simple ceremony was thus completed.

Martin muttered to himself for a while before speaking, “There is one matter I worry about before I leave— Richard. I believe he will be walking a thorny road in the future, but the two of us are essentially the same.”

Hendrick frowned, “But the Empire’s troops are almost at Earl Barton’s lands. I can only restrain those loyal to us, and maybe the nobles to a limited extent.”

Martin smiled, “Just ensure that our casualties are small. It isn’t easy to take advantage of Richard; it’s best to leave those like him alone if one cannot kill them completely.”

Trembling, Martin nodded in agreement. While he was considered an epic being himself, he knew that those like Martin and Richard wandered around peaks that he didn’t dare to touch. Many such beings would face a premature end, but every crisis they survived would allow them to rocket forward.

"When are you planning to leave?” Hendrick asked.

“Tonight. Any longer and I might not have the courage to do something so silly,” Martin smiled bitterly.

......

A short while later, Martin pulled his white hood back up and left Hendrick’s chapel. As his group braved a snowstorm to leave in silence, he stopped midway and looked into the distant skies.

Grey clouds obstructed vision all over, with huge clumps of snow landing on the ground. However, Martin’s gaze seemed to pierce through the clouds and the void itself to land on Richard in another plane. Seeing a thread of fate, he saw that Richard seemed to be heading towards an abyss of destruction.

“Such a fool,” he scolded under his breath, but as he shook his head he almost forgot that he was being foolish himself. The Radiant Lord had failed in heaven, and he had decided to head over to follow through on that mission. On the contrary, he would only need to wait silently to become the next Radiant Lord himself in a few years, gaining everlasting immortality. With his current choice, failure meant death.

However, Martin didn’t feel like he was doing wrong. He did not care for divine status, he did not lust for immortality like most others did. His dream had become his faith, and his faith was to illuminate the ends of the world.